Well we non-religious make a stink about the strings usually attached to Christian charity such as proselytizing to those in need receiving the charity. What a horrid thing to have to sit through that shit before you can get something to eat or drink. Granted, some are kind enough to simply plague you during or after the meal so you don’t have to wait, but still, the way I always understood it, charity ain’t charity if it’s got conditions.

Now we have this report which alleges something far worse, that the Christians aren’t even bothering to help the non-Christians.

Max Beauvoir, Haiti’s “supreme master” of voodoo, alleged his faith’s opponents had deliberately prevented much-needed help from reaching followers of the religion, which blends the traditional beliefs of West African slaves with Roman Catholicism.
“The evangelicals are in control and they take everything for themselves,” he claimed. “They have the advantage that they control the airport where everything is stuck. They take everything they get to their own people and that’s a shame.

At first, I have to confess, I found it difficult to believe because of what I mentioned earlier. I mean, it’s tragedies like these that they live for since it’s fertile soil to both proselytize and make your religion more appealing. To think they’d deliberately pass that up seems antithetical, but perhaps things are so bad there that they’re simply cutting their losses. In fact, it seems they haven’t made much headway there at all for centuries, so maybe they’re making sure the ones who currently claim to be Christians don’t slip away by making it their first priority to see that they get aid first.

In any event, this is why religiously motivated charity and other good deeds aren’t actually as good as you might think. The root is “religiously motivated”, for if you help people because your religion says it’s right rather than understand why it actually is right, then that can be really troubling. There’s no understanding then, and this gets back to what I’ve said often about Christianity discouraging empathy. If your actions are motivated by what your religion says and those actions happen to help people, is that ok? No. Hell, the Nazis gave Germany the autobahn and the original Volkswagon, so were they cool? No, because the ends don’t justify the means. Furthermore, if your primary concern is the religion and not the people, then you may do shit like this priest alleges, like not aiding certain people, or telling people condoms can actually give you AIDS. If you honestly cared about people, things like that would never enter your mind. Killing your kid with prayer and preventing others equal rights are more examples of this lack of empathy and putting religion before people, before reality. Another is a ridiculous new bill in Utah which will make women who have miscarriages murderers, all because the Mormons are more caught up in their religion than reality.

Well I suggest you read the article I linked to earlier because aside from this charity issue, there are other goodies such as Christians on the radio telling people they caused the earthquake so they need to repent and also not to be outdone by Pat Robertson’s nonsense that it was due to a pact with the devil, those same people who he’d say were devil worshippers (although ironically they actually worship the same fucking god as Pat claims to) claim this was a sign that people need to get back in touch with nature. I have to admit that last bit is pretty good, but again, that doesn’t make voodoo good for suggesting that because why? That’s right, the ends don’t justify the means, although the voodoo people predicted something was going to happen 6 months in advance, so there is that.

Whenever I hear the word Voodoo, I think about a bunch of people drinking some blood rum out of a coconut to conjure up zombies, and whenever I hear the word Christian I think about people drinking blood wine out of a challace while praising a father zombie. Can't the two crazies just get along, or are they worried about a zombie fight breaking out? I can only imagine what these deluded people are thinking with so many rotting corpses lying around.

I wonder if anybody is trying to raise the dead down there. Christians believe they can perform greater feats than Jesus performed, and Jesus supposedly raised Lazarus plus his own zombie body. Voodoo people believe they can raise zombies from the graves too. Why isn't the news covering this kind of thing, as I'm sure those beliefs are probably rampant in Devil/Jesus worshipping disaster struck Haiti.

The news only covers what's marketable, and voodoo lovin' Haitians aren't marketable right now. Neither is the drug addicted or AIDS riddled Haiti. Nope, it's poor, sad, victimized Haitians which are marketable now, until some celebrity gets busted fucking someone or injecting something, or the other way around. Of course MTV might develop a reality show out of it like that fucking New Jersey show of theirs.

Anyway, I think you've watched The Serpent and The Rainbow too many times. I do want to see Zombieland, though.

Seriously, people need hope, right? Well these people are fucked, so there's not much real hope to sell, but if you can convince them to ignore how bad things are and make them think it's actually worse, and that you can sell them some special kind of hope out of that will get them out of that, well now you're on to something. It's Sales 101, you've gotta create demand. Look at Apple. Wtf do I need an iPad for? Yet I want one because it's awesome, great, and fantastic.

..if you help people because your religion says it’s right rather than understand why it actually is right, then that can be really troubling. There’s no understanding then, and this gets back to what I’ve said often about Christianity discouraging empathy… if your primary concern is the religion and not the people, then you may do shit like this priest alleges, like not aiding certain people, or telling people condoms can actually give you AIDS.

I fully agree, except for the "Christianity discouraging empathy" rhetoric I've objected to before. Yes, there are some really deluded people out there who identify as "Christian" but most every atheist knows that, especially here. You're painting with too broad of strokes, Chief. It's like saying "atheism discourages morality." Both statements are inaccurate and rhetorical.

"The manual?" Do you mean the Bible? If so, which one do you claim is "the manual" for "Christians?" Anchor your claim to something objective here and not just some allusion. Cite your source. Lay out your argument such that it can actually be challenged. Mumbling about Abraham and Isaac and people who hate gays and call themselves Christian doesn't sustain your "Christianity discourages empathy" argument.

Right, I cited passages over there. You can address that over there, and stop being an idiot and answering comments on the wrong blog (ie – "manual" here, "bible" there). Try and keep it together, genius. It's not that hard.

Anyway, as always, you're the only one who has trouble understanding my comment, so unless someone else needs further clarification over there, I'd say I did more than mumble. I can't perpetually try and dumb down everything to where you can follow it because you've shown consistently that you either can't or won't follow anything regardless of what I do.

To throw in my penny's worth of commentary, when it comes to religious people doing charitable deeds, there are some who do it in order to try to win converts. Then again, I am sure that quite a few also do such deeds as living examples of their values. In other words, "I do this because I am a Christian" rather than "I do this to get them to accept Christianity." Two different motivations. I don't see how the latter is much different than I as a secular humanist who embraces a worldview that sees the validity and necessity of helping others. Both accept their own version of a worldview that says "X is right because…" and then acts accordingly.

The distinction is in the "because". That's what I was referring to earlier when I said I have my students learn how things work rather than simply give them a set of instructions to follow. "I do this because I'm a Christian" exhibits no understanding, and with no understanding, what will you do if given an outside of the box moral dilemma? What's even worse is if your religious leader starts telling you certain actions are what Christians should do, especially when that involves voting to deny others their rights.

No, there's a HUGE difference between doing something because that's what you're told to do and doing something because you understand why it needs to be done.

You cited Romans 1:26-27 and mentioned Abraham and Isaac. That was it.

Nothing in Romans 1:26-27 says even a single word about denying anyone rights. That was your own addition of course, presumably because it makes your blanket statement that "Christianity discourages empathy" that much more acceptable in the eyes of the unlearned.

As for Abraham and Isaac, hey, you're the one that supports abortion; where's the empathy in that?

Besides, even though nothing you've cited supports your blanket statement, it's what you omit that I'm concerned about, and that's hundreds upon hundreds of passages from both testaments that explicity encourage empathy and extol it as a virtue. You have to ignore all that to make your case, and I'm just wondering why you do? Are you really that bent?

I think what Hitchens actually said was something like, "Mother Theresa didn't love the poor. She loved poverty." That is exactly the point here. A pathogen doesn't love an immune-compromised person. It is merely encountering a convenient and vulnerable victim.

Indeed. She apparently saw her role as merely to comfort, not to cure. I believe she said misery was a gift from her god. She could have seen the answer to that test to be using all that money she'd get to fund research and bring in doctors but no, she seems to have seen it as a test for her and her order to suffer comforting these people and also a test for those people to endure their afflictions. Now even if she chose the former instead, I'd still find that morally suspect because although the ends might be good, the means are not for she wouldn't have really understood why such action was good. In other words, her foundation would be faulty and as we've seen, because the foundation was faulty, she acted immorally.